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England head coach Brian Ashton has moved to allay fears about captain Phil Vickery’s fitness for the World Cup following his side’s 22-9 defeat to France at the Stade Velodrome.

Ashton confirmed that Vickery, who was carried off on a stretcher just before half-time, suffered concussion in a crunching midfield collision that also involved his team-mate Simon Shaw and France centre Damien Traille.

But Ashton told Sky Sports: “Phil is out for a while now, but he’ll probably be okay for the first game.”

Ashton said they were no World Cup concerns surrounding either Vickery, flanker Martin Corry (knee) and scrum-half Shaun Perry (dead leg).

England appeared to lose their way once talisman Vickery departed as France cruised home through a Yannick Jauzion try, 14 points from scrum-half Jean-Baptiste Elissalde and a late Frederic Michalak penalty.

All England could manage in reply were three Jonny Wilkinson penalties that gave him 915 Test points and took him into third place on international rugby’s all-time chart behind Welshman Neil Jenkins and former Italy fly-half Diego Dominguez.

But for the second successive pre-World Test against France, England failed to score a try, leaving Ashton looking for answers just three weeks before their opening World Cup game against the USA in Lens.

Ashton said: “The big disappointment is that the basics of our game that were there against Wales and France during the past two weeks let us down. You don’t win games over here if you don’t get the fundamentals right.

“We should have scored a try in the first ten minutes, but we didn’t, and then we lost field position and couldn’t regain it.

“We also got a man sin-binned and we conceded 10 points when he was off the field, so when you put all those things together there is no way you are going to beat France in Marseille.”